Horror Writers Share the Most Terrifying Narratives They have Actually Read

A Renowned Horror Author

The Summer People from Shirley Jackson

I discovered this tale some time back and it has lingered with me since then. The named seasonal visitors are the Allisons from the city, who occupy a particular off-grid country cottage every summer. On this occasion, rather than returning to the city, they decide to prolong their vacation a few more weeks – an action that appears to disturb each resident in the nearby town. Each repeats an identical cryptic advice that no one has remained in the area past the holiday. Even so, they are resolved to stay, and that is the moment things start to get increasingly weird. The man who brings fuel refuses to sell to them. Nobody will deliver groceries to their home, and when the Allisons endeavor to drive into town, their vehicle fails to start. Bad weather approaches, the power of their radio diminish, and when night comes, “the elderly couple clung to each other within their rental and anticipated”. What might be they waiting for? What could the residents know? Every time I peruse Jackson’s unnerving and thought-provoking tale, I’m reminded that the finest fright originates in what’s left undisclosed.

Mariana Enríquez

An Eerie Story by a noted author

In this short story a pair journey to a typical seaside town in which chimes sound constantly, a constant chiming that is bothersome and inexplicable. The initial very scary episode takes place at night, at the time they choose to walk around and they can’t find the water. Sand is present, the scent exists of putrid marine life and salt, there are waves, but the sea is a ghost, or a different entity and even more alarming. It is truly deeply malevolent and every time I travel to a beach in the evening I think about this narrative which spoiled the ocean after dark for me – favorably.

The young couple – she’s very young, the man is mature – head back to their lodging and find out why the bells ring, during a prolonged scene of confinement, macabre revelry and death-and-the-maiden encounters grim ballet bedlam. It is a disturbing reflection about longing and decline, two bodies growing old jointly as partners, the bond and violence and tenderness of marriage.

Not just the scariest, but perhaps among the finest brief tales out there, and an individual preference. I experienced it en español, in the initial publication of these tales to be released in Argentina in 2011.

Catriona Ward

Zombie by an esteemed writer

I read Zombie near the water in the French countryside in 2020. Despite the sunshine I felt cold creep through me. Additionally, I sensed the excitement of fascination. I was writing a new project, and I had hit a wall. I wasn’t sure if it was possible any good way to compose certain terrifying elements the narrative involves. Experiencing this novel, I saw that it was possible.

Released decades ago, the novel is a grim journey through the mind of a murderer, the main character, based on an infamous individual, the serial killer who slaughtered and cut apart multiple victims in Milwaukee over a decade. Notoriously, Dahmer was fixated with producing a compliant victim that would remain by his side and attempted numerous horrific efforts to achieve this.

The deeds the story tells are appalling, but similarly terrifying is its own emotional authenticity. Quentin P’s terrible, broken reality is directly described using minimal words, identities hidden. The reader is immersed caught in his thoughts, compelled to witness mental processes and behaviors that shock. The foreignness of his mind resembles a bodily jolt – or getting lost in an empty realm. Entering this story feels different from reading but a complete immersion. You are absorbed completely.

Daisy Johnson

White Is for Witching by a gifted writer

When I was a child, I was a somnambulist and later started suffering from bad dreams. On one occasion, the horror involved a dream where I was trapped inside a container and, as I roused, I realized that I had torn off the slat from the window, attempting to escape. That building was falling apart; when it rained heavily the ground floor corridor became inundated, insect eggs fell from the ceiling onto the bed, and on one occasion a sizeable vermin climbed the drapes in that space.

When a friend handed me the story, I had moved out in my childhood residence, but the narrative of the house high on the Dover cliffs appeared known to me, longing at that time. It is a story concerning a ghostly clamorous, atmospheric home and a young woman who consumes limestone from the cliffs. I loved the book so much and went back frequently to its pages, each time discovering {something